Finding The Thing

Finding the Thing

A friend and I set aside one day each year in October and one in April for our pilgrimage to a tiny Texas town, where with thousands of others we comb rural acreage in search of delights. Past years have yielded a stereoscope, an enamel bread box, a Bible bookplate of Luther at Worms, and a dirt cheap pair of pink-and-peach Elsa Schiaparelli costume earrings. Each year we have our eyes peeled for what we call “the thing”—that unique find that fits our particular tastes and interests.

One year, I found it at a shop called Clutter. It was an illustrated sheet titled “Writing” from what might have been a Sunday school curriculum. The birdseed type at the bottom of the page said that “Writing” was lesson number eight in a book called Manners and Customs of the East published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in London.

The text described how children in the Middle East learned to write: first in the sand, then on leaves of trees or on skins or parchment. “This,” I read, “made their books very dear, so that each person could not have a book of his own.” It ended with “We ought to thank God that printing has made books so cheap that even a poor man may buy a Bible for himself, and read it at home; and that there are kind and rich people who get books printed for the poor; so that every poor child may learn to read the word of God.”

For me, it was “the thing.” And for ten dollars, I carried home a neat amalgamation of my love of God, books, writing, the Word, and one-of-a-kind items that tell a story. My antique-store find synchronized several loves at once. The best things always do. And every one of them is an echo of the truest, most perfect thing: the moment when all of history and prophecy and obedience and love caused a King to die and a curtain to tear and a Roman soldier to whisper in awe, “This has to be the son of God” (see Matthew 27:54).

Does it get more perfect than that?

Don’t be afraid. I know you’re looking for Jesus the Nazarene, the One they nailed on the cross. He’s been raised up; he’s here no longer.

Mark 16:6, MSG